Posted on 06/04/2007 11:07:45 PM PDT by neverdem
Print Edition
Since 9/11, politicians and pundits have repeatedly warned that terrorists who can’t get their mitts on a fully functioning nuclear device could still spread radioactive death with a “dirty bomb,” a conventional explosive combined with radioactive material. Such a weapon, they claim, would scatter the material far and wide, rendering a large area unlivable and turning rescue efforts into suicide missions.
The results of tests involving controlled dirty bomb explosions, reported at a February meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, cast doubt on this scary scenario. Physicist Fred Harper of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, who led the experiments, said even first responders on the scene of a dirty bomb attack probably would not need full radiation suits. The tests indicated that most of the radioactive material would attach to large fragments of debris and end up on the ground, not in the air, making for an easier cleanup. And the very smallest particles, which could cause radiation damage if inhaled, tend to float above most people’s breathing space.
Steven Musolino of Brookhaven National Laboratory, who worked on the dirty bomb experiments with Harper, summed it up this way: “Pretty much everything bad happens within 500 meters, and to a large extent [the bad effects] don’t happen.” That conclusion jibes with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s fact sheet on dirty bombs, which says the long-term health risk of limited exposure to radioactive particles is probably “extremely small.” The commission categorizes the dirty bomb not as a weapon of mass destruction, but as a weapon of mass disruption.
sequitur.
You said in later posts the reaction is irrational. You said in the first it is rational and the author "a moron" for thinking dangers overhyped, when he is of course entirely correct. You said in your last that this was only a narrowing of focus; it isn't.
And you also pretend an enthymeme of your own is a syllogism of mine, which is practically the definition of non sequitur and straw man combined.
It is pathetic, really...
Bug on a windshield...
“Sic [sic].”
A 500 M radius circle contaminated with even low level radiation in downtown manhattan would be a fairly disruptive thing--at least on the order of 911 and probably quite a bit worse.
Give me a Geiger counter, and I'll be glad to go in. I know enough about radiation to know that the author is anything BUT a moron. The major damage from a "dirty bomb" would be psychological. You're wrong.
Not even close.
“The major damage from a “dirty bomb” would be psychological.”
If you read my other posts on this topic you would see that I have already said as much.
The radiation will have to be cleaned up. Not cheap. Everyone will have to leave the area. Actual destruction would be the same as from any truck bomb plus destruction due to the cleanup. Human loss minimal, economic loss $billions, but all FedGov money.
Hmmm. I don't do rad cleanup. But I work with folks who do. And the insanity they have to go thru for even really low level stuff like DU is extraordinary.
Plus, how do you get past the people factor? Noone will ever accept that that 500 M (and a large area around it) is safe again.
Yes, and insanity is exactly what it is. Most of that rigmarole is just overkill window-dressing to satisfy some ignorant bureaucrats. Folks who actually KNOW about radiation know better. In my college days I minored in nuclear science, and worked with Co-60, Cs-137, and on a few occasions, Cf-252, so I "do" know the score here.
"Plus, how do you get past the people factor? Noone will ever accept that that 500 M (and a large area around it) is safe again."
Simplest thing in the world. Hand'em a Geiger counter and let'em measure the residual radiation level for themselves. "Dirty bombs" are a minor hazard. The real danger is biological. Read up on some of the stuff the Soviets cooked up in their biowarfare programs and be very afraid.
Based on what? Your expertise?
He doesn't discuss the psyche of the country.
'irrational reactions' were outside the scope of the article and not required to be discussed.
Thanks to the overhyped nature of a dirty bomb, anyone using on the US will be subject to nuclear attack.
What a strange world -- that this is good news...
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